Evidence that creation of a Pinus radiate plantation in south-eastern Australia has reduced habitat for frogs

Loss and fragmentation of habitat resulting from the clearing of forests for agriculture and urban development threaten the persistence of thousands of species worldwide. The clearing of native forest to plant a monoculture of exotic trees may also reduce and fragment the habitat available for indigenous plants and animals. Metacommunity theory suggests that the species richness of a community in a patch of habitat will increase with patch size but decrease with patch isolation. We investigated whether replacement of native Eucalyptus forest with a plantation of Pinus radiata has reduced and fragmented habitat for frogs, leading to a lower species richness of frog communities in the pine plantation and in small and/or isolated remnant patches of native forest. We surveyed frogs at 60 sites at streams and wetlands in the pine plantation, remnant patches of native forest surrounded by pines, and adjacent areas of contiguous native forest near Tumut in New South Wales, Australia. Only two of eight species of frogs were recorded in the pine plantation, and regression modelling indicated that streams and wetlands in the pines supported fewer frog species than those in remnant patches or the intact native forest. In addition, species richness tended to be higher at wide, shallow swamps and marshes near the headwaters of streams, with herbs, grasses, shrubs, reeds, sedges and rushes in the emergent and fringing vegetation. There was little evidence to suggest that larger eucalypt remnants supported more species of frogs, or that remnants isolated by greater expanses of pines supported fewer species, but we had low power to detect these effects with our data set. Our results support the preservation of all remnants of native forest along drainage lines and around swamps, soaks and bogs, regardless of size. Where new pine plantations are established, for example, on cleared agricultural land, care should be taken to maintain the structural and vegetative characteristics of water bodies to ensure that they continue to provide suitable breeding habitat for frogs

Are only the strong surviving? Little influence of restoration on beetles (Coleoptera) in an agricultural landscape

Habitat restoration has become an important part of biodiversity conservation in the face of extensive habitat loss and fragmentation, especially in agricultural landscapes. Study of invertebrates such as beetles (Coleoptera) may be important to assess t

A comparison of techniques for sampling amphibians in the forests of south-east Queensland, Australia

We employed three techniques for sampling amphibians (nocturnal stream searching, pitfall traps with drift fences, and automatic tape recording of anuran calls) concurrently for six nights at 20 forest sites in south-east Queensland, Australia, to compare their performance. Nocturnal stream searching was the most sensitive sampling technique, detecting the most species with the fewest nights of survey. Pitfall trapping was the least sensitive sampling technique. On average, a minimum of four nights of survey was required to detect the range of amphibian species present at a site. Nocturnal stream searches and automatic tape recorders were robust in the range of conditions encountered during the survey, with no significant relationships found between temporal or spatial variation in their performance and weather or site conditions. This systematic study represents one of few to compare different techniques for sampling amphibians in a given region, and the first such study to compare automatic tape recording of anuran calls with other, more traditional sampling techniques

Are incentive programs working? Landowner attitudes to ecological restoration of agricultural landscapes

Private property accounts for much of the planet's arable land, and most of this has been cleared for agricultural production. Agricultural areas retain only fragments of their original vegetation and this has been detrimental to many native plant and an

Modelling the benefits of habitat restoration in socio-ecological systems

Decisions affecting the management of natural resources in agricultural landscapes are influenced by both social and ecological factors. Models that integrate these factors are likely to better predict the outcomes of natural resource management decision

Reptiles in restored agricultural landscapes: The value of linear strips, patches and habitat condition

Habitat restoration, including revegetation of linear strips and enlargement of remnant patches, may benefit native fauna in highly fragmented landscapes. Such restoration has occurred around the world, even though the relative importance of strips and patches of vegetation remains controversial. Using reptile communities from south-eastern Australia, we assessed the conservation value of revegetation in strips and alongside remnant patches compared with remnant vegetation and cleared roadsides. We also examined the distance that reptiles occurred from remnant patches into linear vegetation. We found that reptile species richness and counts did not substantially differ between revegetated, remnant and cleared habitats, or between linear strip and patch treatments. This may indicate that species sensitive to land clearing have already been lost from the landscape. These results imply that if specialist species have already been lost, we may be unable to measure the effects of agriculture on biodiversity. Furthermore, revegetation with the expectation that fauna will recolonize may be unrealistic and translocations may be necessary. Unexpectedly, we recorded higher species richness and counts of rare reptile species in remnant linear strips as distance from remnant patches increased. Ground-layer attributes were important for increasing reptile species richness and counts and in structuring reptile communities, explaining approximately three times as much variation as remnant shape or vegetation type (remnant, revegetated, cleared). Management agencies should protect and effectively manage remnant linear strips if rarer reptiles are to be retained, paying particular attention to ground-layer attributes. The decision to include ground layers in future revegetation activities will be more important than the shape of restored areas

Detecting extinction risk from climate change by IUCN red list criteria

Anthropogenic climate change is a key threat to global biodiversity. To inform strategic actions aimed at conserving biodiversity as climate changes, conservation planners need early warning of the risks faced by different species. The IUCN Red List criteria for threatened species are widely acknowledged as useful risk assessment tools for informing conservation under constraints imposed by limited data. However, doubts have been expressed about the ability of the criteria to detect risks imposed by potentially slow-acting threats such as climate change, particularly because criteria addressing rates of population decline are assessed over time scales as short as 10 years. We used spatially explicit stochastic population models and dynamic species distribution models projected to future climates to determine how long before extinction a species would become eligible for listing as threatened based on the IUCN Red List criteria. We focused on a short-lived frog species (Assa darlingtoni) chosen specifically to represent potential weaknesses in the criteria to allow detailed consideration of the analytical issues and to develop an approach for wider application. The criteria were more sensitive to climate change than previously anticipated; lead times between initial listing in a threatened category and predicted extinction varied from 40 to 80 years, depending on data availability. We attributed this sensitivity primarily to the ensemble properties of the criteria that assess contrasting symptoms of extinction risk. Nevertheless, we recommend the robustness of the criteria warrants further investigation across species with contrasting life histories and patterns of decline. The adequacy of these lead times for early warning depends on practicalities of environmental policy and management, bureaucratic or political inertia, and the anticipated species response times to management actions